


Phylactery

by Quicksilver_ink



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Gen, Queer Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-15
Updated: 2011-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-26 02:28:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/277649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quicksilver_ink/pseuds/Quicksilver_ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her parents don't know she's a Magical Girl. They don't even know she's a girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phylactery

Amber lays on her bed in the dark, staring blindly up towards the ceiling, still wearing her Puella Magi form. Their bodies were just _meat-puppets, as_ her sister Puella Magi Rosa had said, retching, once Incubator explained the arrangement to them. It wasn't really her real _body_. Even though, these three months as Puella Magi, she's felt more comfortable in her skin than she ever has in her thirteen years of life.

Her eyes sting as tears leak down the side of her face. Her soul gem, resting in her hand beside her, is splotched with black, the oil-slick that Incubator had told her was the cost of her magic. It's darker than it's ever been. She has a grief seed in her pocket, but she can't be bothered to clear it. What's the point? Everything was a lie anyway. She was already doomed as a Puella Magi to die alone, she was already some sort of walking-dead creature anyway, so what difference did it make if it was tomorrow or a few years from now?

There is a knock on the door. "Paul? You in there?

"I'm doing homework," Amber says quickly, and scrambles to sit up and switch on the light. She's got books in her lap as the door opens, her Puella Magi ribbons and lace gone in the blink of an eye.

"History or English?" her mother asks when she's stepped into the room. She always seems to want to know what's going on in school.

"Spanish, actually." She keeps her eyes locked on the page in front of her without really seeing anything. "We're reading poetry."

"Anything good?"

Amber hunched her shoulder. "There's one by this guy Octavio Paz that's not too bad." She pulls the name off the page quickly, although she hasn't even looked at the first stanza.

"Well, I'll leave you to it, then," her mother says, and turns to leave. She stops at the door, one hand on the frame. "Paul?"

The name doesn't make her flinch anymore, although three months ago it did, when every reminder about the lie she'd told Candace and Rosa made her want to hide with guilt and shame. "Yeah, mom?"

"Is everything okay? You sound kind of... down. Is something going on at school that you'd like to talk about?"

"Everything's fine. I'm just tired, is all."

Her mom stays there, a moment longer, and then leaves, closing the door behind her softly.

Amber tries to read the poem before her – she needs to have it memorized for tomorrow, and she's had a week but still hasn't even looked at it. A little stab of worry – if her grades dropped, she'd be grounded, and it would be harder to go hunt witches with the other gir- the others... although maybe they wouldn't be interested in that anymore, now that they knew the truth of Puella Magi.

"Meat-puppets," she murmurs. _I used to live in my body_. The thought is terrifying, but rings false. She hugs herself, shivering. Her body feels subtly wrong, the chest her arms are drawn across too flat. She wants to change back to a Puella Magi, but what's the point? _This_ is how she has to be, in real life. This animated corpse is who she really is.

The poem is short, and eventually, she reads it, her mouth shaping the Spanish words. "Quiso cantar, cantar para olvidar... su vida verdadera de mentiras, y recordar su mentirosa vida de verdades."

 _He sang, singing not to remember his true life of lies, but to recall his lying life of truth._

She reaches into her pocket for the grief seed.


End file.
